Power Supply Cost Recovery factor increases: 0.10 to 0.258 cent per KWH
Well gasoline prices are down. But the 'Important Information' area at the bottom of my DTE Energy bill states the following [[in part): Beginning with the January 2015 cycle, the Power Supply Cost Recovery [[PSCR) factor will increase from 0.10 per kWh to 0.258 cent per kWh....
This looks like a over 50% increase pending! They offer some further verbiage that this increase is required for DTE to 'recover' purchased power expense... "billed to the customer without any profit or markup."
What are the politics and policy fueling this increase? Anyone read this 'Information' pg. 1 portion of their recent DTE Gas/ Electric bill???
What is the real cost of solar energy?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
wazootyman
While I don't disagree in theory - I do have to point out that it is a sizable investment. The cloudiness in Michigan is also a factor.
I had a small-ish array quoted for my home. I forget the exact output, but it was on the order of a couple of kilo Watts. The raw cost was about $13k, which included the panels, grid-tied micro inverters [[mounted to the panels), installation, utility tie-in and misc. electrical work. I was going to have the panels mounted on a detached 1.5 car garage with a southern-facing roof. I was going to do some of the structural reinforcing and trenching [[for the electrical lines between the garage and house) myself to save money.
After tax rebates and a DTE SolarCurrents credit, it was going to cost about $8k out of pocket. That's $5k off; a huge discount, but still a major cost. I calculated that with my current usage, it'd take about 13 years to pay back.
I'm not sure where I'll be in 13 years. Maybe a bigger home. Maybe the next owner would see a huge value in a solar array. Maybe they'd see it as just a liability and potential maintenance issue. In any case, it was decided that the cost just couldn't be justified at this point. Instead, my I've re-lamped my entire home with LED bulbs and focused on high-efficiency products and power supplies.
I'm just throwing this out there as an example. I certainly don't want to deter anyone from doing it. If I could get the out of pocket cost down to a couple of grand [[and/or the payback to a couple of years), I'd go for it. I'm not sure when or if that'll ever be the case, though.
By the way, the company I worked with was
http://sunventrix.com/. I have no affiliation whatsoever with them. But they were extremely helpful and if I do end up doing it in the future, I'll be giving them a call back.
Where do you think the after tax rebates and DTE SolarCurrents credit money comes from? It comes from you and me in the form of either added fees or higher rates from DTE and if it's a tax rebate then it gets added to the federal deficit because the Government had to borrow A HALF TRILLION last year just to pay for stuff like this. The extreme example would be if everyone went solar at the same time then the $5K you saved would get passed to me and my $5K would get passed to you and so on, and so on, so everyone would just be paying the full price. Nothing comes for free.